


Not Perfect but Better

by naruvoll



Category: Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: The Return - Fandom
Genre: Abusive Parents, All plot, Alternate Ending, Blood and Violence, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Behavior, Complete, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Minor Character Dubcon, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers, Supernatural Nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naruvoll/pseuds/naruvoll
Summary: Cooper and the gang make one last attempt to stop Judy from taking over the Lodge and destroying the world.I hated how Twin Peaks: The Return ended. I went immediately on a writing bender to make a final episode for myself so I wouldn't be quite so angry. This is an attempt to tie up as many of what I felt were loose ends as I could. It follows immediately on the end of Part 18: What's Your Name? with no gap, so there are inherent spoilers even with the first words. And it won't make sense if you haven't seen Twin Peaks: The Return anyway.This story is mostly plot, written over a single weekend, but it is complete.





	Not Perfect but Better

Her other name yelled across the dimensions and Carrie heard it. In the hearing was another terrible life to add to her own. She remembered in that moment Leland, who was not her father, on top of her, smiling and calling himself BOB. She remembered the cocaine and the men and the beatings, and her spirit doomed to wander the black lodge – a backwards hell of pain and desire for it. It rolled over and she screamed. Which made it worse. She fed the black lodge and the lights went out. Popping as the light screamed with her, their glass bodies breaking as hers could not, though she wished it would. 

It wasn’t just the lights on the house. Her house somewhere, somewhen else. It was all the lights. Every light on the street. Every starry light in the sky. Her scream extinguished the light and in one horrible instance she felt the black lodge reign supreme. There was only darkness. This was the way the world ended not with a bang but her screaming her soul out until even the air was dead. 

A hand gripped hers, firm but compassionate. She choked on her last gram of breath. 

His voice, the FBI agent’s, came out of the boundless dark, “It’s ok, Laura.”

Carrie shook her head, unseen in the dark. Her voice came out in a ruined croak from her scream. “My name is Carrie.” But that wasn’t true. It was Laura, too. Somehow. She was both. Alive after the end of the world and dead by her father’s laughing hands in some other. 

The FBI agent squeezed her hand, pushing his presence on her awareness. “I’ve been in the dark before. You can survive it. You can come out ok.”

“How?”

He pulled her and it was almost like being buried, the air thick and gravelly and very insistent that they should not be allowed to even think of moving. But he pulled strong and the air reluctantly gave way. He forded the nothing across where the street had been to the place where the house had been. And even though there were no stairs anymore in the dark, he climbed. He pulled her behind and they rose. 

Her other name roared down through the darkness like it was hunting her, demanding she be still, roll over, let herself be stabbed into oblivion. This time the FBI agent heard it because he squeezed her hand again, almost painfully, but reassuring as nothing else could be in this nothingness. 

“That’s Judy,” He explained calmly. “She owns your diner. And used to own a place called the black lodge.”

Carrie croaked, “This is the black lodge.”

“This?” He asked as if it was all good fun. “This is just the stairs down. And we’re going up.”  
“How aren’t you afraid?”

“I’ve lived here. Twenty-five years. You told me that. I’ll see you in twenty-five years. And here we are. Which means it’s time to go home.”

She yanked futilely against his hand. “It’s not my home. I’m Carrie.”

“And you’re Laura.”

She didn’t have an argument for that. 

The darkness softened to a reddish tinge. Still dark but no longer apocalyptic dark, as if some dim red giant were cresting the yet unmade horizon.

“We do have to hurry. There’s too much of Judy in the lodge already. And we can’t let any more in.”

Carrie fought again. “You work for the black lodge.” She struggled to get free.

“Sometimes. It’s like dealing with informants. You help a small criminal to get the bigger one. It’s enlightened self-interest.” His hand reached out and shoved a crimson curtain, banishing the darkness with cold light.

Behind them a bestial screaming roar echoed and still sounded like it was moaning her other name. 

Then they were inside and standing on a parquet floor, face to face with a mirror and a one-armed man. Then Carrie screamed again when the mirror moved without her, her own face and body smiling and beckoning her in with ragged jerky movements. 

Her other self, the dead one, spoke in jerky phrases as if every syllable was forced out of her corpse chest by electric shock. “Hel-lo, Laur-a. We- have- missed- you-.” 

“I’m Carrie,” she protested again.

“I-m Car-rie. You-are Laur-a. You-are dead. Look.” And her skin paled and blued, covered in tiny bits of trash, her clothes replaced with a wrapping of plastic. “But you have an-oth-er ex-ist-ence. It looks just like you. But it-is me.” She pulled Carrie’s other hand, dragging her close, and kissed her on the lips, breathing into her mouth with a taste so foul and fetid it made her gag and jerk over as if she would throw up but the instant her mouth broke free of her doppelganger she flickered into non-existence. 

The one-armed man spoke in the same Frankensteinian shocks, just quicker and surer as if he had had many times the number of years to grow used to having his once-corpse shocked into speech. “More is behind you. There is already more inside. It is trying to break the walls. She is following her, Cooper.”

Cooper smiled and squeezed Laura’s other hand. Carrie’s hand. Somebody’s hand that was hers. “Laura is the key. She always has been. Like her father before her. Is he still here?”

The one-armed man, roll-limped around to lead them to the corner of the room and through the curtains out into a corridor. It was a straight shot the length of it, and then through the curtain at the opposite point. 

“This is the same damn room!” Laura said.

“It only looks that way,” Cooper said. “It’s hard for the living and even unliving humans to see but every bit of this place is different.”

Laura pointed at the parquet floor and then at the same four chairs, and the lamp. “It looks pretty convincing.”

“This is the aperture room. We were in the downstairs landing before.”

Laura shook her head as they repeated it all a trio of times. The world was insane. A backwards hell where – and then they stepped into the fifth room and there were literally the fires of hell. A man who must have been Cooper’s twin sat in a chair at one side, glaring across the room at her father, Leland. Leland’s face was stark horror and pain, though he looked fine. Cooper’s twin looked peaceful, he even smiled, but he burned, the flames of hell licking at his flesh without consuming it, looking like it was trying to spark out every iota of pain and send it across the room the twin’s glare to Leland. 

The one-armed man almost stuttered, “This is the suffering room.”

Leland turned at the voice. “Laur-a,” he cried desperately. Tears poured down his face and he strained against his own grip on his chair. “Laur-a!” 

Laura took a step back. Hundreds of memories flooded fresh and raw into her conjoined mind, of him laughing and hurting her. Pleasing her. Demanding terrible things from her. Worst of all his animalistic smile as he threatened to kill her, to maim her, as he also brought her to screaming from his harsh caresses. She turned, pulling hard against Cooper’s grip, fleeing his sobs for her to come to him again. And she felt a wind at her back, the black lodge pushing her on. She snapped free of Cooper’s grip and crashed headlong into the red curtains.

The curtains rippled and split and she was free into another room, another parquet floor, another repetition of the same four chairs and she didn’t slow down, still running from the shouts of her name.

She careened into another room sobbing. And then another. And then Cooper had grabbed her up again. “Stop. If you go off the path you could end up anywhere.” 

She squirmed against his grip, trying to twist free. “Anywhere has to be better than here. I can’t stay here.”

“We’re not going to stay here. We’re headed back to the house. Your house.”

“It’s Laura’s house. And what if- “

“It will be ok. Trust me, Laura. You have to get out of here and I’m offering you a ride.”

Laura laughed. “Yeah. That might work. Ok, I’ve got my coat.” 

It was easier the second time in the suffering room. She kept glancing at her father but he was too beaten to meet her gaze or call to her anymore. Cooper’s twin was more unnerving with his evil smile but she didn’t know him. And he was the first person in here not to talk like his words were jerking out of him. “So, you come to gloat?”

“I can’t say I’ve come to be friendly,” Cooper said. “But you know how to beat the lodge. And you’ve been talking to Phillips. And you had BOB.”

The evil twin shrugged noncommittally.

“So, I need to know how to get to the walls. I’ve got the key but I don’t know how to strengthen them.”

“What makes you think I do?”

“You knew how to weaken the lodge. You must know the reverse.”

“What’s in it for me? I’m already here. You have nothing to threaten me with.”

Cooper turned to the one-armed man. 

The one-armed man shrugged with his one whole side. “We are will-ing to let you go to New York. The box instead of the suffering room.” 

The evil twin laughed and pointed his fingers like a pistol at Cooper. “You don’t know what they’re offering, do you.” 

“I was in the box for a few minutes.”

The evil twin laughed again and Laura shivered as the familiarity of his laugh crept through into her subconscious. She clapped one hand to her face. “You’re BOB.”

“We’re all BOB here. At least a little. BOB is the messenger. Didn’t you get the message, little girl?” 

Laura squeezed her eyes shut. She was over forty. And she was not going to let him make her feel like a terrified child. Tears leaked out of her eyes and her breath came in hitches. But she opened her eyes and glared at him. “No.”

“Yes or no,” Cooper said. “Box or suffering. What’s it going to be?”

The evil twin smiled the big wide BOB smile. “Alright. She’s the key and the gate and the wall. Judy is just pretty tired of that. So, she sent the message that the key had to die, that the gate needed locking tight, and the wall needed breaking down.” 

“What does that mean?” Laura asked.

“Means we have to hurry,” Cooper said. He nodded to the one-armed man. “You’ll see he gets his fair time in jail?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“I’m pretty persuasive,” the evil twin said.

“The devil doesn’t get time off for good behavior,” Cooper said.

“We’ll see,” the evil twin said. 

“Not me. We’re going home,” Cooper said. He took Laura’s hand again and lead her through the looping repetition of halls and rooms. 

It was maddening. Just the same over and over again. Until it wasn’t. They got to another curtain that should have opened yet again onto the same stupid hallway with the same stupid statue. Instead they crunched out into woods, their feet sinking into pine needles and dirt in a ring of trees. 

An older woman with short died red hair and multicolored fingernails gripping her arms sat on a black rent-a-car about sixty feet away at the nearest point a car could fit.

Cooper called, “Diane. You made it back.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She stood up and her clothes were even weirder than the rest of her. They looked like hippie clothes and the shirt was definitely cut for a guy, not a girl, even a relatively flat chested girl. “These shoes keep telling me they don’t belong to me.”

Cooper walked over as if to hug her but she wasn’t having it, turning away and getting into the back seat. “You’re driving. And for your information, Richard is better in bed than you.”

“I’m sorry, Diane.”

Diane threw her hand back as if tossing a glass over her shoulder. “To the Bureau.” She slid into the back seat.

Diane kept surprising Laura because she was so quiet and stewing that Laura often forgot she was even in the car. Not that Cooper made much noise. It was just a long awkward car ride through the woods. Down into the now dawn lit town. It looked exactly the same to her as the town that had gone apocalyptically into darkness.

As they passed the R&R diner, its lights now on for breakfast, Diane finally broke her silence as she leaned her face against the rear driver’s side window. “They look just the same but it only looks that way, doesn’t it.”

“Yes, Diane. This is a different room.”

Laura asked, “But I’m from a different… room?”

Diane tsked and lit up a cigarette from her bag. She took a deep drag before pouring the smoke up to the ceiling. 

Laura waited for Diane to correct her but she didn’t. And Cooper didn’t explain either. As they drove up to the same house where the world had already ended she objected, “I’m a little lost here.”

“That’s the whole point,” Cooper said. “You’re lost and we have to get you home. We’re all lost until you’re there.” 

“But what if the room ends again?”

They got out of the car and walked across the street. The sound of shattering glass and yelling leaked out of the shut door and windows. 

“No, I’m serious, what if the room ends again?”

Cooper pounded on the door, seven sharp perfect raps. Silence inside. Then the bolt pulled back. The door opened and a disheveled, red eyed woman stared out at them. Tiny sparkles of glass flecked her hair like broken star light. Her face showed a too long, too hard life. 

Laura gave her a tiny wave. “Hey, Judy.” 

They blinked at each other. And a shudder ran through Laura’s body. This wasn’t her Judy – wasn’t her, Carrie’s, boss Judy from the diner. It was her, Laura’s, mother Sarah. They stared at each other over the gulf of a quarter of a century. Over the gulf of rooms that looked the same but weren’t the same at all. Recognition fought with reason.

Sarah choked. Tears squeezed out of her eyes that had already swollen with too many tears. She growled like a feral dog that desperately wanted the food offered to it but knew down deep in old broken bones healed with experience that it was a trap to kick and beat her. “You’re not Laura. Who are you? How dare you. You’re not Laura.”

Laura looked at the mother she had never known. A better mother? She didn’t really remember her own mother. What she remembered of this one was marred by BOB and how Sarah covered for him, refused to notice the signs or react to the events. But Laura also remembered being Carrie and explaining away every temper tantrum and slap of her boyfriend Rob. He was just drunk. He had just had a hard day. He had just -. It was just -. It became a stutter in her head, a truth wired into the electricity of her being. And she had lost a baby she never thought she wanted until it was a dead surprise before it occurred to her that maybe touching a live wire was bad for her. Laura let out a long shaky breath. Her mother was her. She had just lost the baby late, seventeen years too late to cope. She stepped forward, brushing past the FBI agent. “Sometimes, I’m Laura.” She offered up her arms.

Sarah Palmer burst into a hard sob and half threw herself on Laura, half collapsed into Carrie’s arms. Her thin frail body shook and twitched with the sobs she couldn’t control. Another corpse kept alive by Frankensteinian cruelty. Electric shocks to keep her moving and breathing when she had clearly been wishing for death in every drink and cigarette. 

Somewhere in the clutch, they sank onto the porch ground. Sarah stroked over the dyed blond waves of Laura’s hair. “We have to celebrate. We’ll go to the double R and you’ll tell me where you’ve been. Where have you been?”

“Why don’t we go inside, Mrs. Palmer,” Cooper said gently but firmly.

Sarah had to refocus on him, take a moment to remember that there were other people there. She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to refocus again, force herself to remember another life. “Agent Cooper? You… I thought you were dead, too.”

“Just busy Mrs. Palmer. I’ve been touring a house. But I think we would be better inside yours. I don’t think this is a meeting for the public.”  
“But… I haven’t got anything in there. There’s no real food. Mostly just alcohol and cigarettes.”

“I’m sure that will be just fine Mrs. Palmer. Love is the food for the soul after all.” 

“But I really don’t have anything. Not even a cup of coffee. The double R has good coffee. And I haven’t slept. I’m going to need it to stay awake.”

Cooper inhaled at the sense memory of the double R’s coffee, a thrill of pleasure running through him just at the memory. “Damn fine Coffee,” he agreed. “We’ll definitely need some later but right now I think we should go inside.”

The mistrustful growl was back. “You can’t go inside.”

The tall silent woman with dyed punk red hair offered, “I could take off my shoes.”

A tiny baby voice objected, “I don’t belong to you.” 

Sarah stared at the woman’s hiking shoes. She couldn’t think. How much vodka had she had? 

Laura cupped her sometimes mother’s face, urging it back to her. “Why don’t you want us to come inside, Mom?”

“Because I haven’t cleaned. Because I hate this house. Because… since you went away and your father died….” She shrugged.

“We heard the sound of breaking glass,” Laura said. 

“Don’t look at that.” She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t want you to see that. I just-.”

And Laura heard it in that phrase. Just. Just drunk. Just a bad day. Just lost my temper. I wouldn’t have if you just hadn’t.

“I hired someone to shoot my boyfriend, Rob.” She took a long shuddery breath in the stunned silence. “He just hit me one too many times. So, I spent all of both of our money to have a guy shoot him. Bastard must have gotten wind of it though, shot the hitman through the back window while I was getting him coffee.  
“I was going to run. That’s when Agent Cooper tracked me down. And tried to take me home. I want to go home, Mom. You can’t have screwed up worse than me.” Laura hiccupped. “So, there’s really nothing- “

Sarah stroked her daughter’s hair, tears still blinking out of her. “Yes, there is. But at least I can show you, you’re not the worst person in the world.” She stood, bringing her daughter across the threshold. 

Laura jumped as the porch light over the door popped, going dark.

Diane said, “Fuck you, Judy.”

Cooper stared at Diane, mouth open. 

“What? I’m retired. I’m allowed not to be polite anymore.”

Cooper smiled in the way that said they simply wouldn’t be talking about this and instead crossed the threshold. He turned to say, “It is too late, Judy,” to the brightening sky.

Sarah Palmer asked, “Is it?” She reached up with her free hand and took off her face in a blaze of light.

Laura screamed, her voice breaking, and tried to pull away from her faceless mother but Sarah squeezed so tight that Laura sank to the floor, yanking against the too tight grip.

The voice from the blaze of light said, “You were rude. I don’t think you can come in.” She flicked the fist that gripped her crumpled up face and the door shot closed and stuck. 

Cooper didn’t feel the need to check if the door was really stuck. The slam had been good enough for him. “You’re hurting her, Judy.”

“I’ve been trying to kill her. Hurting her isn’t a worry.”

“Sarah Palmer wouldn’t like it,” Cooper said.

A horrible electric shock laugh flickered out of the light coming from where the woman’s face should be. “Who do you think was stabbing the walls, Agent Cooper? It wasn’t me. It was dear old Mrs. Palmer with an empty bottle of Sobieski. Trying to cut her own heart out, as if a picture were the real thing. You humans are just so convinced that dreams are real things and real things are dreams. This little bitch was just too much pain and she wanted to end it and take revenge on all the years stolen from her.” 

The bright light turned on the struggling Laura who whimpered, “You’re breaking it.”

“You broke her. She was fine until you died, Laura. A little coke and a little whoring out your prom queen ass and before you knew it you’d ruined all their lives. You died. Leland died. Agent Cooper here spent twenty-five years in the black lodge with its ugly parquet flooring in every single room. I’m surprised he didn’t go mad. All because you couldn’t keep your legs closed and one little secret.”

“Two secrets,” Cooper said.

“Oh, you’ve figured it out?” The bright light asked.

“You showed me. When would Sarah have picked up a rider? The lodge has been shut for twenty-five years?”

Judy got bored with crushing Laura’s hand and threw her into the wall, flexing her hand. “This body is getting old.” She sighed like she was talking about taking out the trash, then shrugged. “There are many more places than just the black lodge and the white. Many more things out in the wild dark than their little islands of rules and debauchery.”

“But not here. Not in Twin Peaks where Mrs. Palmer has been living in her own private hell for twenty-five years. No. You’ve been creeping around. And they haven’t seen you. So, I bet you’ve been here the whole time. Since BOB got here.”

“I don’t follow BOB,” the light growled. “I was old when BOB was shit out for the first time at White Sands by my daughter. He was born and I was refertilized to live again. I’ve been here,” She tapped her chest to indicate Mrs. Palmer, “Since just after her first kiss in August 1956.” She shrugged again. “But when I saw BOB slumming it inside of Leland, their playing kissy face seemed convenient. A possibility. A child by me and BOB might be able to do extraordinary things.” She sighed and shrugged, rounding on Laura who was huddled against the wall, clutching her hand. “You were such a disappointment dear. Laura and Carrie both, didn’t know how to fight, didn’t know how to fuck, didn’t know how to eat. Nothing but worthless girls. I kept hoping that BOB would fumble something awake in her but look at her. Just look at her. What a worthless chunk of meat.”

She stalked over and grabbed Laura by the hair, lifting her so her face stretched up and she yelped in pain. “Old meat,” Judy said. “So, you want to see what your dear old dam bitch was doing?” 

Cooper ran for Judy but she swung her fist and dead armed him across the chest, barreling him across to the wall the other way. She snorted and then dragged Laura across the floor, forcing her to crawl, crying out whenever her weight came down on her squeezed hand. Into the living room and over to the shattered portrait of Laura as she had been when she was prom queen.

“See, this is what you’re supposed to look like. This is what you would look like if you had any power. Before the lodges. Before the Fireman and all of his kind, we were ageless. Even if we were some of the few who aged we were reborn young and new. We were great. Gods. And you humans were just food scampering around at our feet. Because look at you.” 

Judy slammed Laura’s face into the photo. Laura shrieked as tiny fragments of glass cut her face. The house shuddered like someone had hit a gas pocket triggering a microquake. Judy laughed, delightedly. She pulled Laura back up from the floor. “I take it back m’dear, you are worthwhile for something.” She smacked her face back down, smearing her blood over her picture, grinding the glass into her flesh. The house shuddered and shook. “You’re the key to the walls of Jericho.” 

Cooper limped into the tiny living room. “Horns brought down the walls of Jericho.”

“Keys,” Judy said. “Six keys and seven revelations ordered by the blasts of horns. Don’t argue with someone who was there. I drank the garmonbozia of the beaten city that thought it could not be defeated as its people died and screamed. And I’ll drink that brew of suffering again.” She slammed Laura’s face back into the photo and the house quaked, from the kitchen came the sound of dishes shattering as they fell to the floor. “Don’t worry. Only ten more strikes. Then you can die, little girl.” 

***

Audrey Horne felt all over her once beautiful face, trying to feel if the damage she was seeing in the mirror was real. She felt it. It was all there. The missing eyebrow. The scars. Her lips striated with white scars trembled as she pushed her hand down, below the view of the mirror. And it was worse, so much worse. Scars and pocks everywhere. She barked a sob when she bent down, eyes closed and felt her body end above where her knee should be. She leaped her self-examination to the other leg, it was whole but the inside of it was ravaged. 

How was she standing? 

She peeked her eyes open and to her eyes it was all normal. She was dressed in her normal best. She had two legs. But when she touched her hand to the one leg, her touch didn’t match her sight. Half and more of one of her legs were gone. 

She raised her face to the mirror again, and this time she grabbed it, panning it down her body, so she could see. In the white room reflected in the mirror, all her injuries were laid bare. 

“Charlie!” 

Behind her she heard the hateful agitated sigh. “What Audrey? You’re the one who wanted to go. You’re the one who wanted out. I just wanted to stay in and go to sleep.”

“Charlie,” she begged. She could feel her mascara running down her face but her face was makeup free and dry in the mirror. “What’s going on, Charlie? Help me.”

Her husband sighed hard from his nose, she could imagine him, even unable to see him, his blunt fingers entangled as if he were trying to figure out how to file her correctly. “I try to help you, Audrey. Every time. You want to stay in, we stay in. You want to go out, I get us ready to go out. You chicken out… and I’m tired Audrey. I’ve had a long- “

“Please. Please just tell me what’s going on.”  
“I’ve told you, Audrey. I’ve told you time after time but you don’t want to listen. You don’t want to hear. So, you forget and we do this all over again. I’m tired of it, Audrey.”

“You’re tired? You’re tired! I hate you! I can’t feel my leg, Charlie. I can’t see you. And you’re tired. This is why I left you for Billy.”

Another long sigh and her husband explained with his last thread of patience. “You didn’t leave me for Billy. You’ve never even really met Billy. You haven’t done much of anything in a long time. Because this is the waiting room, Audrey. You’re in the waiting room. Now you can come back and stay with me. Or you can finally go out. But you can’t keep coming in here and chickening out. It’s not good for you, Audrey. It’s not good for me. It doesn’t do anything but hurt everybody.”

“I don’t understand,” she whined. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Charlie stepped out of thin air into the white room. She scuttled toward him but he raised his blunted hand to stop her. “I’m tired, Audrey. I’m supposed to be asleep. We usually go to sleep at seven. Or earlier. I should have been retired thirty-five years ago. I’ve tried to help you. And I’m doing my best. But it’s so frustrating and I’m too tired to do it. All I want is for you to make up your mind.”

“About what? I don’t understand about what? Why are you lording this over me?”

“I’m not. I’m your playmate, Audrey. We take shape when you’re about three and go away when you don’t need us anymore. We live in your dreams. And I’ve been having a whole life with you because you won’t wake up. No matter what happens, you just won’t wake up. And that’s ok. You can stay in here with me.”

“In where?”

“In your head. In your dreams. Your whole life is a dream. Life is but a dream. I am a dream. I’m your dream. One of your oldest. And you want to stay here and live a dream, that’s what I’m for Audrey. But you keep asking to wake up and that’s the other way. That’s through the waiting room and out. That’s where Billy actually is. Or was. And you can go out there and try to find him. I just can’t take both anymore.”

“Are you saying I’m in a Coma?”

Charlie’s face twitched as he tried to get annoyed. He looked over his spectacles at her. “Yes, Audrey. For twenty-five years. Our whole life together. You went to the bank and you didn’t come home.”

“The bank? But I go to the bank all the time. You’re insane. Let’s just go home and- “

“Is that what you really want? After I put on my coat?”

“I.” She held her hands to her face, feeling the ruin. “I’m scared.”

“I was scared when I came in here, Audrey. I was scared when I woke up twenty-five years ago when I should have been asleep for the rest of your life. Scary things happen. You either have to face it or live with it forever. Come back with me and you’ll always be afraid, angry, and confused. I don’t know what happens to you out there but come back with me and that’s life.”

“I wouldn’t be so scared if you came with me.” She held out her hand for him.

“Sorry, Audrey. I can only live inside dreams. I have about the same time you do holding your breath underwater to move from one dream to another. Which means I jump to the nearest person I can when you die and become their imaginary friends instead. I can’t just stay out there. I can either stay with you in here or leave you forever. That’s it. And if I’m staying with you, this is far as I go. You have to go on alone, Audrey.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Billy is real. He was someone else here. Because we can leap from mind to mind quick as a thought, we can connect dreams. I’ve even done it for you with John because he’s here so much.”

“John?” Audrey frowned. John? Did she know any Johns? Then her eyes snapped wide. “Wheeler? John Justice Wheeler? Jack?” 

“He’s in here at least once a month. I don’t think he’s right in the head but he’s here. Still thinks of you as the one taken away. Though I would- “

“Shut up, Charlie, I’m trying to think. No one can think with you talking.”

Charlie crossed his short arms and glared at her. After a moment he reminded her, “I’m tired, Audrey. Are we going home or are you going home?”

“I hate you! How can you be so heartless?”

“Because I’ve told you all this before. I’ve told you everything before. Every time. And tomorrow, you’ll forget. And we’ll play pretend that we’re in an unhappy marriage again. And again. Until you die, Audrey. And I have to suffer along until you do. Of old age. Of someone pulling the plug. I don’t care. I’m too tired to care. I’m too bored. I don’t forget. I remember. It’s only you who wants to go through all of these motions.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you, Charlie!” Audrey turned on her heel and stormed into the bright center of the room. And when that didn’t work she kept right on storming, some sixth guiding to the corner wall. “Good fucking night forever, Charlie.”

“Goodnight, Audrey.”

Audrey gripped the wall and it flowed like a curtain, perfect hospital white. She stepped out into a narrow hall. White curtains. White floor. White ceiling. “It’s just another hall, Charlie.”

“Keep going,” he called from what sounded like a great distance.

She walked down the hall and through the next curtain. Four chairs and a lamp in an empty white room. She angled across and came to the same narrow hallway. “Does it ever stop?”

Charlie’s voice yell-whispered as if he were calling at the top of his lungs from so far away that his voice couldn’t really carry. “Keep going.”

She went through an endless repetition of halls and rooms, all the white blending together, as it brightened and wore her down, as if she were actually climbing some vast set of stairs up and out of her own mind into the real world, the great unending repetition of whiteness blazing out her thoughts and then her memories and then something she couldn’t quite explain. And then even itself, everything just white.

She blinked and the white focused into tiles with tiny holes of darkness poked into them. This meant something. She was sure. Though it was so lazily achy that she wasn’t sure what. She didn’t think she had ever been more tired in her life. Not that she could remember much of her life. Or who she herself was. She sucked in a panicked breath, and couldn’t. There were tubes everywhere. Down her throat. Up her nose. And she was so weak her life and death struggles to get up just lead her to thrashing weakly in her sheets. 

Beside her, a machine went off, screaming beep-beep-beep-beep-beep! Then another sang the same siren wail. A moment later, a nurse was gripping her shoulders. “It’s ok, Ms. Horne. You’re safe.” 

Horne. Right. Her name was Horne. She croaked so soft she wasn’t even sure she had spoken. “Where am I?”

“Calhoun Memorial, Mrs. Horne. Jesus. It’s a miracle.” 

“Miracle?” Came a curious voice from behind and then a cry of, “Audrey!”

Audrey. Right. Audrey Horne. That was her. In the hospital. Because there had been an explosion.

A man almost bald with grizzled temples and cheeks like he hadn’t shaved in a week helped the nurse grip Audrey’s shoulders. A smile lit up his face and “Oh my god,” she whispered as she recognized that charming grin. “Jack?” 

“Yeah, yeah Audrey, it’s me.”

“Old.”

The nurse coughed and asked with complete neutrality, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was at the bank. I was protesting. And…” And nothing. Nothing at all. But Jack wasn’t much older than her. “How long?”

“Let’s leave that for now,” The nurse said. “It’s more important that we find out what you remember.”

“Twenty-five years,” Jack said. His second smile was tight and wounded. And it looked like he had been doing some crying recently. “You’ve missed some things. All of – well, yeah, you’ve missed some things. I’m sorry.” 

“Have I…? Have I ever woken up before?” Audrey asked, finding his strange face, bald and grizzly almost familiar. She didn’t see any but maybe he had started wearing glasses. Maybe she had seen him half waking up.

He sucked in his breath. 

The nurse just shook her head. “No, Honey, you’ve just been sleeping a long time.”

Jack said, “I took care of it. All the projectors are working.”

“Projectors?”

***

The young man stared at the glass box at the epicenter of all the cameras with one eyebrow raised. He bent low to get a better peek of the tube that stretched out toward the New York skyline, reflecting it upside down and teeny-fied like looking in the wrong end of a binoculars. 

“So, I just look at it?”

“No,” the older man said. He scratched his thinning gray hair. “You watch the projector. Like it is surveillance. Most of the time it’s going to be nothing. So get a lot of coffee before you come in.”

“It’s always going to be nothing. It’s a sealed glass box. Actually, is it glass? Pyrex? Aluminum Oxynitride?”

The older man rolled his eyes. Then rubbed them because he was tired enough that the movement hurt. “Is asking this many questions why they boot you out of the army, kid?”

“Dude. I’m twenty-two. And I was honorably discharged. It’s in my files.”

“If you say so. Kid.” They glared at each other a moment but the older man shrugged and the kid let it go a moment later. “Truth is, nobody knows. Some eccentric billionaire pays for it all. Doesn’t tell us shit. Just says watch it like it’s important. Change the disks so there’s never more than one camera not recording. No falling asleep. No distractions. Report anything you see.”

“Which is going to be nothing. There’s no way in.”

The old man licked his lips. He looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers. Then he said low and quiet as if he was still afraid of eavesdroppers. “I saw something once. Inside the projector.” 

***

Sheriff Truman frowned down at Chad Broxford, still unconscious on the floor. 

Andy reassured him, “I took off both his shoes to make sure he didn’t have a second key.”

“There’s other places to hide a key, Andy.”

“I know. So, I also took off his socks.”

“Took off his socks,” The inebriate in cell 4 said. 

“Hasn’t the hospital come to pick him up yet? He doesn’t look so good,” The Sheriff said.

“Doesn’t look so good,” The inebriate repeated. 

Sheriff Truman shook his head and turned his attention back to the smash faced crooked deputy on the floor. “I think Lucy should call the hospital about Chad, too.”

“But Sheriff, Lucy has to do the deposition for shooting the other Cooper.”

The Sheriff rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think that’s going to go in the records, Andy. Let’s just agree she’s innocent of shooting – other Cooper is confusing, we need something else to call him besides Cooper.”

“We could call him Boop, sir.”

“Boop, sir,” the inebriate in cell 4 echoed.

“Agent Cooper like Coop as a nickname and this was a bad Cooper so we could shorten Bad Cooper to Boop. Or Booper. But that sounds like a mistake.”

“Sounds like a mistake.” 

The Sheriff nodded as if this, at last, had convinced him that he lived in the worst of all possible universes. “I think you’re right that we shouldn’t give Lucy any more work. I’ll go ahead and call the hospital and see what I can make happen.”

“What I can make happen.”

The Sheriff left Andy alone in the cell block. 

Andy looked down in dissatisfaction at Chad. He bent down and took out his cuffs. He pulled Chad’s feet through the bars and cuffed his ankles on the far side so even if he did manage to unlock the door, he couldn’t leave it. He stood up, surveyed his work, and smiled. That would do perfectly. 

He turned, ready to go but stopped when he saw the inebriate in cell 4 picking at a large horrific yellow wound on his face, while blood dripped from his mouth. Andy frowned, hating to see anyone in pain, really. “Truthfully, you don’t look very well.”

“You don’t look well.”

It took Andy a second to realize that the inebriate had dropped a word. He stepped forward, his hand reaching for the bars but the inebriate also reached out, his hand, pale, thin, and shaky reaching for Andy. And took his hand, squeezing it to reassure the man that he wasn’t alone.

A spark seemed to leap from the inebriate’s hand to his own and up his arm. Shocking him still.

The inebriate in cell 4 closed his eyes and let go of Andy. “Going to sleep again now.”

Andy’s vision faded to black and white, colorless and bleak but also crystal sharp as if he had traded color for sure knowledge. He turned to go and there was Hawk, because of course Hawk was there. That’s the way things needed to be. “We have to go back to the woods.”

Deputy Chief Hawk didn’t argue. “What do we have to do there?”

“You have to go where we can’t. And I’ve got to go the long way round.”

Forty minutes later in the jeep, his vision was still crystal clear, like his purpose. It was an odd feeling. An awareness in these long miles of silence of just how little clarity his life normally held. But he also didn’t feel any guilt about that, which he thought he usually might. Most of the time he would have been uncomfortable with such a long ride in silence and tried to fill it. But with Hawk it simply was. There was nothing to say yet and so he didn’t feel the need to try and say it. 

It was still the same another hour later when they had had to hike out into the deep woods where no vehicle could go. There was no map. Andy just knew where to go. And when they came to the great twisted black ring of a tree shattered long ago by lightning and fire, Andy knew they had arrived. It was a huge gutted stump of a cedar, filled with new plant life and moss, and big enough for half a dozen people to stand inside. “You have to try and go inside. I have to try and go around.”

Hawk nodded and lifted his leg over the great stump, clambering inside with what grace he could manage. Andy walked around the great stump, starting from where Hawk had climbed in. But before he was a quarter of the way around, they had vanished to each other’s eyes. 

Andy would have worried but everything was still crystal clear. He could see the tiny flickers of the trees changing as he walked, the scenery moving to be somewhere else as he dialed the circle around the stump. He returned to the starting point, the forest noticeably different until the crystal clarity of his vision faded. The lush greens and beautiful sky returning. He put his hands on his hips and looked around at a loss. “Well, now what am I supposed to do?”

***

Hawk found himself in the middle of a largely empty room. It was surrounded on all sides with red curtains. The ceiling was blank white. Four chairs in two pairs at a right angle sat with a lamp in the center of a parquet black and white floor. Hawk sat in one chair and looked across at a tall man with a great lantern jaw. 

The tall man nodded in greeting. “I am the Fireman.”

“I’m Deputy Chief of Police Hawk.”

“Welcome to the White Lodge, Hawk. The log has been expecting you.”

Hawk realized a log of wood sat on the nearer chair, next to the Fireman. He looked at it closely before deciding that, yes, it was Margaret’s Log. “I’m glad she went someplace good.”

The Fireman nodded solemnly. Then again like he was listening. “The log says she went where she was supposed to go. That’s most important.”

“Is here where I am supposed to go?”  
“For a moment. Then you will need to make a house call. Splitting allows travel. This is just a stop on the way.”

“Will Andy find home?”

“It will take him a while but his heart will lead him where he belongs back to Lucy.”

“Ok,” Hawk said. 

They sat a few moments in silence. Hawk looked at the floor and its zig-zagging design. “If this is the white lodge, why is it a black and white floor?”

There was a sudden jolting shake as if someone had hit the room with a car.

The Fireman leaned over to hear the log better. “The black lodge and the white lodge are the same. It’s in your perspective. Stand on the black and you’re in the black lodge. Stand on the white you’re in the white lodge. We all live here together. But the log would like to go back so it doesn’t have to keep figuring out which lodge it is in.” 

Hawk nodded and held out his arms. The Fireman lifted the log off the seat and passed it to Hawk, who tucked it close, like he had used to tuck his own babies years ago. 

Another long passage of time. If time passed in the White Lodge. Then the Fireman smiled. “There. Andy has made it where he is going. Which means you can go where you are going.”

Hawk stood up, moving the log carefully under his arm. He thought for sure that he could feel some reaction from the log, as if it were the other way around and the log was tucking him carefully into position. 

The Fireman twisted his hand and the red curtains rippled in a high wind and then parted. The room shook like an earthquake and Hawk stumbled a moment, nearly losing his feet before he balanced himself and the log. Before him was a frozen image of a house with half its lights burned out. Before the door stood a woman with short red hair, dressed like she was just back from a hike. The Fireman said, “She’s my daughter too. Or granddaughter if you want to think in more human terms. I gave her to BOB when BOB was born for BOB to bear.”

Hawk nodded. “The smiling man is dead.”

“He was born of nuclear fire. As long as that light burns, BOB cannot die. He can only pass to somewhere else.”

Hawk nodded again. “He’s elsewhere then.”

Everything shook again, like the world was being smashed to bits and they were riding the wave on top. It shook something free in Hawk as well, some vestigial blockage from birth that he had come into this world with, dislodged so he could sense, like hearing, the presence he held in his arm. She was just a log, the same as the trees were just trees, the same as the white lodge was the black lodge, the same as the world was fresh made every moment and ancient beyond comprehension unless it was hidden and codified behind numbers and words. She was just a log but she was also something great and old that saw and cared. She spoke, as much as a log can speak, and Hawk could feel it as if he heard it. It was time to go, time to act.

Hawk stepped through the curtain and back into normal time. The world crashed and shook again. “We need to get in there.”

The woman with red hair spooked, whirling around as if to fight. And he recognized her as Agent Cooper’s friend who had been the blinded woman. “Diane. We need to get inside.”

“I can’t open the door. I tried.”

Hawk reached out and pulled the door open.

Inside the living room, still holding her sobbing daughter by the hair as she dripped blood, obscuring the picture of her teenage other self, Judy snapped her head around. “More of you interfering. No. He can’t come in, either.” Her voice snarled out of the hole of light, shivering through the world in a command. “Nothing of you and yours may enter here.” 

Hawk felt an intractable force pull the door against his strength, demanding that it shut. Even if he dropped the log, and he couldn’t imagine doing that anymore, and put both hands and all his strength to it, he knew he couldn’t keep the door open. He knew as surely once it was shut there would be no way inside.

***

Audrey could barely speak, was barely cogent, but the old drive burned in her and it didn’t matter that she was in a hospital bed, her body withered, aged, and full of tubes there was shit to get done and she was going to make her mark. She had demanded a phone and Jack had pulled one out of his pocket like a magic trick. It was a cell phone, something like the giant brick her father had toyed with when she was a girl, but from her future, sleek and small and glossy.

She looked up in wonder at the thing, a tiny computer monitor overlaid the phone, bright and colorful, shining on her and Jack’s face. She smiled at him, delighted, and he smiled back but there was something there. Something wrong. One of his eyes reflected the light differently than the other. She moved the glowing screen to see if it changed things, maybe it was like 3-D. But no, his eyes flicked to the movement and one didn’t move as fast or as far.

Jack’s smile turned sheepish. He reached up and tapped his age fattened cheek with two fingers. “Accident with an automatic track layer in Venezuela. I was on site for – well for something stupid. A lot of other people lost a lot more than an eye.”

“Oh, Jack.” Her lips quivered. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I missed it all.”

“I’m sorry for everything you missed, Audrey. And some of it is important. You don’t- “

“Later. I’m sorry. I have to do this. I need the number. For New York.”

“But do you even remember-?”

“I have to find out. Don’t tell me. Just the number.”

He reached down and pressed long and hard on the bottom of the cell phone. The screen changed to black, a single hypnotic flowing line of light and color blazed through the center. “Call New York.”

A woman’s voice, not a recording because Audrey could hear in the intonation that it had never been human, echoed, “Calling New York.” The computer screen flicked to the image of number buttons and a symbol of a phone as the ring of a call issued out of it. She pulled it to her ea.

“Blue Rose Coffee Project,” a woman’s southwestern accent answered. “This is Jade speaking. How may I help you?”

Audrey drew a blank. What had she been thinking. She felt this intense need to do but she didn’t know what she had been doing. She didn’t even know what the projector project she had somehow dreamed up and somehow given to her boyfriend from twenty-five years ago – only a few days ago in her mind – to make happen. She was completely lost.

“Hello? Blue Rose Coffee Project. Move to where you’ve got more signal. I can’t hear you.” 

Audrey stared at her boyfriend. Now old. The man she had wanted to marry and spend the rest of her life with and have children with. No children now. Too old. They weren’t the same. Down to losing an eye.

Audrey’s heart stilled. She stared at her boyfriend’s glass eye. Her boyfriend. Her project. Sprung out of her imagination while she was asleep. Her first words came out so soft that even she couldn’t hear herself clearly.

“What was that? Are you there?”

“Sorry, I’ve been in a coma.” Audrey croaked.

“Sorry, I still can’t hear you. Did you say you wanted a donut?” 

Audrey belted out a repeat of, “I’ve been in a Coma!”

Silence on the other side of the line. “Sorry. Can you tell your boss that I’m calling?” Her gaze flicked back to her boyfriend apologetically for her imagination’s cruelty. “For One Eyed Jack.” 

“Oh.” Audrey could hear the phone turn to the side before the yell, “Rose! Corporate calling for you!”

There was the classic juggle of clicks and swishes as the line was handed off to someone else. A new woman’s voice came on the phone, sounding dumpy, short, and Eastern European, possibly Russian but Audrey couldn’t really tell. “I go in the back.” A door slap and then, “No. It is too soon. Next month is too soon. I have to start with all new girls this time because of last time. Everyone hear about blood everywhere and everyone quit. We don’t even know the boy yet. No. You call back later.”

Audrey blew out a breath and tried to process what she was hearing and just couldn’t. So, it was time to take control. Managerial decision. “Now. It has to be tonight.”

“You are new. You don’t know. My girls can’t work with nothing. I tell you, they are all new girls. Jade, the girl you talk to at the front, only one with real experience. I had to import her from Las Vegas. Pay her triple to help train other girls and then normal, too, for normal jobs. And I don’t think the boy likes black women. He never look at her twice. He maybe likes Mindy from Minnesota. He’s an army brat. I can tell. But she hasn’t been on coffee shift when he comes in. Yet. I am working on it. Call back when I have had time.”

“Tonight,” Audrey said. And somehow, she was sure. “Tonight or never.”

“Look, you are new. You tell One Eyed Jack. He will tell you. We are not ready yet. We are still in set up.”

“You’re not Rose,” Audrey said, which stopped the tirade. “I am the Blue Rose.”

“Ok,” the woman on the other end said quietly, as if she was the one who had been in a coma. “I am listening.”

“I am like the Blue Rose. Split in two so the ink colors me what I need to be. I needed to be me and you but that ends tonight. It’s tonight or never. For everybody. You have to turn the projector on tonight. Blue rose or red or it’s never. For everybody.”

“I understand you,” the woman on the other end said softly. “I will send Bedisa. Blue rose or red will happen.”

“Good.” Audrey hung up. Swallowing hard. That hadn’t gone the way she had intended it to go at all. She had needed to find out and instead she had ordered… something. She licked her lips that felt like dried up old parchment. “Jack… what did I just do?”

“I think you must remember some of it.”

***

Diane stuck her foot in the door. The door pressed hard against her, like someone was leaning on it but she blocked it open. Her foot spoke to her in that angry baby whisper, “I don’t belong to you.” But Diane didn’t resent it this time. She pushed back against the door, shoving it open for herself, Hawk, and the log. 

The shining emptiness growled louder, it’s light blazing and pointy as if it was a beast with raised hackles. “I said you can’t come it.”

“Say what you want,” Diane said. “Fuck you, Judy.” She kicked the door wide enough for Hawk and the log to slip inside. “Well, go on then.”

Hawk ducked around her into the house while Diane held the door for them and any reinforcements that might come. Not that he expected any. He figured if he had the log, then he was reinforcements.

Coop called, “Careful Hawk,” when Hawk came into the living room. “She’s stronger than she looks. And she can do a lot of damage to you.”

Hawk nodded.

Judy tightened her grip in Laura’s hair and smashed her face into her picture again for spite. The world rocked and it didn’t just stop. The echo of it kept going, rolling the trembling earth beneath their feet. 

Hawk found it easier to balance with the log though. As if it weighted him down solidly to the Earth in the way merely being on the planet couldn’t. It weighted him in time as well as space and in reasonableness which now seemed its own dimension along some other axis that intersected without ever quite being a part of space and time. “She says it’s time to stop, Judy. It’s time to come home.” 

“Shut up,” she snarled. “That bitch can’t control me anymore. She doesn’t get to ever tell me what to do again. She can’t stop me. None of you can. A man can’t stop destruction.”

Diane repeated from the doorway, “Fuck you, Judy.”

“Not a woman either!” And she slammed Laura’s face down again. She cackled as the world rocked and swayed so hard that everyone had to hold on to the house not to be thrown off their feet. The earth quaked and kept quaking, the roll of power undulating and threatening as it spread to undo the world and all its barriers.

***

The kid preferred to be called Will or William if it was formal. Though his mother had always called him Billy. Even when he had returned from deployment in Iraq. He’d been a soldier and still it was Billy. Or kid. Son, if the person thought he needed taking care of. Never mind that he had killed his fair share of people. Which meant one that he was sure of. He was the caretaker, not a person in need of taking care of. But jobs had been tough after coming home. The war had been a long haze of boredom punctuated with sharp crystal clear brightnesses of fighting for his life. Which made all the jobs with excitement seem boring. And all the boring jobs a monotonous reminder that somehow always seemed to erupt into moments of sharp frightening clarity. After the first few times, new jobs didn’t want him. So, he was stuck with bottom of the barrel shit. Like this.

The fingers of his left hand went a mile a minute tapping on his knee as he concentrated on the box. His right leg, unbeaten and unbowed by any fingers, bounced its own dance of terminal frustration. He was watching a Goddamn empty box and waiting for it not to be empty. Which was impossible. What he was really waiting for was the beep that would shock his system and burn through his nerves when one of the video cards went out.

He rifled his fingers through his short buzzcut. He wanted to grow it out. But he was worried he would end up looking like all those ex-military bums looking for a pity party and a hand out. Fuck, he hated this job. Why the hell had he taken this bullshit? Because it was the last place that was hiring. All he really wanted was to go back in. But you screw one superior officer’s wife, even if she was a bitch in heat panting for a young stud, and the army is done with you. They won’t say it was rape. Because it wasn’t. And they won’t dishonorably discharge you. Because they don’t want to say it was rape. Because it wasn’t. They don’t want to add to the dishonor of an officer and a gentleman who is so much better than a piss ant little kid like you, Billy. So, if you just get the fuck out, no one will ever mention this again. 

Billy’s other leg started bouncing against his fingers. He just wanted this stupid shift of this stupid job to be over. This was Hell. He had actually found Hell. Civvies thought war was Hell. No. War was horror. The monsters and the walls closing in but you got to shoot back at them at least. This was Hell. Boring, stupid shit for no reason and no reward. CO said wash the latrine with a toothbrush, there was a reason. There was a reason to do it. Something came out of it. The reason could be dumb but there always was one. This was mindless on both ends. Nobody had a reason for this. This was just to figure out what stupid shit you could get someone to do. A lot for a paycheck.

The worst part was: Billy was pretty sure he would do it again. Fuck, he’d do it now. He wanted to hate fuck that woman to an inch of both their lives and when her son of bitch husband caught them he would blow the fuckers brains out and use the blood for lube. Or something. He didn’t know. Something worse. Anything was better than being here alone staring at a Goddamn glass box.

A knock on the door jolted him out of his mental spiral. “What?!” There was a moment’s pause and then another knock. “Oh, Goddamn it.” He jerked himself upright off the couch. He didn’t bother with taking the altar stairs, just jumped off the tiny rectangular dais this stupid job had him sitting on. He stomped over to the door, secretly relieved to have something, anything, to do. This job paid mint and it still wasn’t enough. 

He clicked on the video monitor, which had a shot from a security camera mounted to the ceiling pointed down so he could see anyone standing in front of the door, all the way to the security station. Which was empty. A few cups in a carrier the only sign of habitation. But there had definitely been a knock and the security guard wasn’t supposed to leave any more than he was. He waited a moment, expecting to see the guard, whose name he hadn’t memorized yet, come back from the bathroom.

Nothing.

“Goddamn it. Just Goddamn it all to Hell. Really.” Billy punched the button to open the door. The industrial security door whooshed to the side, revealing the real life of his video feed image. Billy stomped over to the security desk just to make sure the asshole hadn’t gone to sleep back there or something, on the plain wood. Because who knew. You had to be nuts to work here. “Hey! Where are you?!” Billy called, hoping that the guard would take himself as you since he couldn’t remember the name to call. “Where’d you go?!” 

Billy grumbled to himself. He picked up one of the cups in the carrier. It smelled deliciously of coffee and had the little blue rose decoration sticker on the front that the coffee shop next door put on all their eco-friendly cups. Billy sniffed it. He hummed to himself. He had to admit the libtard overpriced place had some good coffee. Not too overpriced either. He kept the coffee cup as he went and pounded on the bathroom door. “Shit on your own dime. Come on.”

Nothing.

Billy jerked on the door handle and the door swung open. The bathroom was pristine, like it had just been serviced. And 100% empty. Nothing even in the trash. “What the fuck, man? There’s always supposed to be someone here.” He took a sip of the delicious coffee. “Always!” he yelled in the hopes of it finding and shaming the guard. He shook his head in disgust. Well, he supposed it meant he got all three cups of coffee, then. 

He turned.

He came face to face with a silencer.

The crystal clarity dropped over him, the world seeming to brighten, as he dropped the coffee.

The woman cocked her gun to make clear she was willing to shoot him, now. 

He froze, his muscles vibrating with tension. He took her in, zeroing in on her beautiful hard face, her long rain coat, black as her gun and silencer. And bare feet and calves, why he hadn’t heard her sneaking up on him. 

“You will go back into the room and shut the door behind us.”

“There’s nothing in there. Where’s the guard?”

“You will go back into the room and shut the door behind us. Fail to follow my instructions and I will shoot you so that you die.” 

Her voice sounded off. Like a well disguised accent. Industrial espionage? She sounded a little Russian. Wait, he was ex-military. Was he? Was this off the books? Was this espionage, espionage? He had heard that the Russians were trying to restart the cold war. Was he part of an experiment that she understood better than him? Was he failing his country? Was-

“You think too much.” She tapped his nose lightly with the silencer. “This is easy. There is nothing in there. So, we go in there. You live. Someone else cleans up the spilled coffee. There is no use crying over it.”

“Milk.” 

“Coffee comes as it is.” 

He had the perverse desire to smile. This was so stupid. So stupid. And crazy. And she was right. There was nothing in that damn room. So, he turned and obeyed instructions. He felt her behind him like a buzzing itch at the base of his skull, the knowledge of death so close. But he wasn’t dead yet. And she was going to make a mistake. Even just the wrong footing and Billy would have the gun off of her. 

After he closed the door she said, “Now we will go to the couch. You will sit on the couch. And I will not shoot you.” 

He gave a little bark of a laugh. “At least you’re specific.”

“Accidents are bad for business. You only want to shoot the right person at the right time. One bullet. Anything else means you have made a mistake. That means reprimands and repercussions. Perhaps an unfriendly discharge. This is not something I want. So, I am specific because I do not want any of that.”

Billy let her march him over to the chair, his mind starting to get in gear again. With what she was saying, it sounded like there was a good chance he was getting out of here alive even if she didn’t screw up. This might even be a good thing. Some excitement that might result in him learning what the hell was going on. He turned and slumped recalcitrantly on the couch. “Ok, so now what?” 

She tugged at the belt on her rain coat with her free hand, dexterously untying it without moving any other part of her body, like the hand holding the gun at him. The rain coat gaped and exposed bare skin all the way through. She shrugged half the coat off, showing half of her naked body, perfectly tended in perfect shape, as if her entire life task was to care for herself with exercise and products. “You are gaping, funny boy, which is good. Because now we will screw. You will make me cum. And I will not shoot you.” 

***

Andy never did find the Jeep. Nobody found him. But, eventually, after he was sure he had gone in several circles, he stumbled onto a road. He couldn’t decide on a direction but a big white limo blew past him and he figured that meant town was the opposite way. So, he hiked in that direction and finally came into town, bone weary, and wishing he was a couple of decades younger. 

He found the main road and marched his way past the double R. Then he turned around because he really could use a coffee and a piece of pie after all that hiking. He collapsed onto one of the bar stools and groaned as he leaned on the bar. 

Shelly glided over to him. “You ok, Andy? You look like you’ve been through the ringer.”

“Hi, Shelly. I have been lost in the woods and have been hiking all over. I am hoping that a coffee and a slice of cherry pie will make me feel less like I’m going to die.”

Shelly nodded. “Right, I’ll get a move on with that for you.” 

The door jangled behind him and there was a thump as someone collapsed onto the stool next to him. Bobby asked, “Where have you been, Andy? The Sheriff has been looking all over for you and Hawk.”

Andy rubbed his chest. He was relatively sure he wasn’t going to have a heart-attack. That was shoulder pain. This was burning right in the center. “We went out to the woods because Hawk needed to go somewhere and I needed… you know I can’t quite remember. I’m pretty sure it had to do with Laura Palmer.” 

“Laura?” Bobby’s sharp face winced in pain, the man sinking into himself. “I swear she’s everywhere all of the sudden.”

Shelly breezed back to them and lay down the coffee and pie. “Hey, Bobby, what can I get you?” She frowned at him. “Are you alright? Have you been in the woods, too?”

“Not today. I think I’ll have what he is having. Thanks, Shelly.” He watched her go, sadly. “In the woods. I think I’ve been lost in the woods all my life, Andy.”

Andy made a noncommittal noise while shoving pie in his mouth.

“With Shelly, the love of my life, and before that with Laura. Who didn’t really love me. Which was ok because I’m not sure I loved her. Not like Shelly anyway. But I still wish I could fix it. I wish I could not be that stupid kid and take it all back. You know what I mean?”

Andy made a noncommittal noise while chugging his coffee.

Bobby rubbed a circle on his face. “Sometimes I really feel like if I just had one shining moment, I could be the real me, not just this me but a better me. One shining moment to fix it all.”

Andy clapped his hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “Well, you’ll get your chance tonight.” He smiled at Bobby. “When the world rolls, it’ll roll you right back to where you need to be. One shining moment. Don’t waste it.” 

“What?” Bobby stared flabbergasted at Andy as Shelly laid down the coffee and pie, smiled, and then fled to serve a customer that she had less emotional baggage with.

Andy’s eyes widened. “Oh, and don’t forget, you have to be at the crossroads where the last stoplight is. Otherwise Agent Cooper gets it. And that didn’t work out so well.”

“What?”

Andy clapped Bobby’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine. …Are you going to eat that?”

***

It was flat out the hottest sex Billy had ever had. The woman – he still wasn’t sure if she was a spy, an assassin, or a hooker – moved like their lives depended on it. And she was beautiful. And she smelled amazing. And there was a gun against the one side of his head while she made soft deep ecstatic groans against the other. He was afraid. He was turned on. He was pissed. And she only groaned louder when he got rougher. If she was a hooker, he owed some friend big time. 

“Perhaps we play a game,” she teased breathily, stroking through his hair with the silencer. “We both hold gun and we shoot the person who cums first.” She tensed her body, squeezing him and his eyes rolled back in his head. 

His eyes rolled back and this fucked up night actually got weirder. There was something in the goddamn box.

***

The earth rolled with the next smash but then Judy froze, the empty hole of her face going dark. Her hand was still locked in Laura’s hair, holding her whimpering and bleeding. But taking no action.

Hawk interpreted, “My log says, we only have a minute.”

Coop rushed over to the pair. He reached down into the empty hole of the woman’s face, reaching in so far that he was leaning into the darkness up to his shoulder. He felt around, digging in emptiness with his fingers. His fingertips brushed something large moist and smooth. Something like paper brush-snapped angrily against the side of his hand. Coop shoved himself hard against the hole to grab it. It was huge and viscous like it was covered in wet snot. He pulled it free, revealing a creature that looked something like a toad with frog skin and dragonfly wings. 

The thing buzzed angrily in his grasp. Coop grabbed the wings with his other hand so it couldn’t fly away. 

Hawk interpreted, “It’s a thing of the desert. It doesn’t like water.”

Coop ran for the kitchen. 

Hawk said, “Don’t worry, this will all be over soon.” He stepped past Laura to the frozen woman who held her. “Good bye,” he said with stoic sadness. He reached into the empty hole where the woman’s face should be, lowering the log gently into the place the toad-creature had been. He stepped back quickly. Just in time.

***

Inside the glass box, something screamed, it’s face, sharp crystalline light, spiked and stabbed at the air. It was humanoid but there was no mistaking it for human. 

His captor, turned, looking at the glass box over her naked shoulder. She screamed, eyes wide.

The thing in the glass shattered it, flickering toward them as a menacing body of light before it froze. It screamed at them again in frustration. It swept its hand through the cameras. Picked one up and hurled it through the small magnifying glass window so it shattered. It turned on them. “If I had time,” it yelled, each word jetting out of it like an electric shock of threat. It flicker zoomed away.

“What the hell was that?” Billy asked.

“I don’t know. But she is so not paying me enough for this. Here, enjoy the gun.” She thrust the firearm into his hand and had snatched up her coat and was off the altar before he had the gun balanced.

“Wait!” 

But she was already out the door. Leaving him alone and aching. He ejected the magazine and groaned. “That answers that.” He tossed the empty magazine on the ground. He pulled to expose the ejection port. Nothing. Of course. Hooker. “Shooting Goddamn blanks.”

He looked around at the broken room. “You know, I quit.”

***

Judy’s face blazed again with bright outraged light. “Youuuu,” She raised up, throwing Laura to the side. “How dare you have me summoned. How dare- “Judy froze. Her body shivered as if she was suddenly plunged into ice. “Yoouuu!” She dropped the face she had clutched in one hand and leapt on Laura, shoving her with both hands toward the picture. She slammed her face back down on the photo and the world rolled like it was unloosing from its moorings into stormy seas. 

Hawk grabbed up the face of Sarah Palmer and shoved it onto the hole. 

There was a scream, apocalyptic if muted. It poured out of Sarah Palmer’s mouth but it wasn’t her voice. Sarah blinked hard and closed her mouth and the scream died.

In the silence they could hear the water running in the kitchen. Then with a tiny choked whine it cut off and Coop, empty handed, came back into the room. “Does the log have any idea how long it will take her to regenerate?”

“I don’t think it is an issue, Coop. Judy is locked back up with the log. However long it takes her to regenerate, she’s going to have to escape the log to get back here.”

Sarah said, “Why are you all speaking crazy?” Then she spotted Laura, broken and bloody on the floor and with a desperate cry, gathered her up, clutching her tight.

Coop said, “Then I’ll call an ambulance before heading out.”

“Heading out?” Diane demanded.

“I’ve got one last thing to try. One last way I think I can set things right. Keep it so Laura never dies in the first place. I tried once but I think I’ve got one last chance. When the world rights itself.”

Forty minutes later he was run-hiking in the dark for the black lodge. He saw the denizens as he knew them as he ran the pattern through the lodge. The Fireman raised his head as Cooper passed from where he was handcuffing a small army of bums, he waved but didn’t stop Cooper’s journey. The one-armed man called after him, “Is it future?!” But Cooper didn’t have time to answer. The arm, skeletally thin gestured the final way. “It is past.”

Cooper came out into the woods by the road. Speeding toward him, as had happened once before, came James and Laura. But there was a difference this time. A Jeep, dark and unpowered, sat on the opposite side of the road. The light off James’ bike flashed in reflection and both Cooper and Laura saw the reflection of the driver. Bobby Briggs. Bobby ducked down but they had both seen. Cooper had seen that it wasn’t this time’s teenage Bobby, it was his own time’s silver haired responsible deputy. A man with his life in order. At least as much as it could be with this past.

Laura hadn’t understood. Just seen the maddening flash of her boyfriend. Her dealer. She twisted and let go in shock and that was enough to send her tumbling. 

It was the same argument. The heartbreaking push and pull of children with problems too big for adults. And she sent him away as she stumbled drunkenly into the woods. This was Cooper’s chance. The moment he couldn’t let slip a second time. A chance to guide Laura away from BOB. 

But Bobby got out of the Jeep. He jogged to join them so they were a trio lost in the woods. And Cooper stopped midstride, his leg hanging in air. He was a stranger, his heart connected them but what was that to a real connection. He lowered his leg gently onto the ground and let his chance go. He walked to the road and headed into town. 

The world rolled, shifted, settled with a grumbling sigh back into its stable configuration. It wasn’t going to be perfect but better.

***

He came to the double R about an hour later, the bright friendly lights beckoning him in out of the dark. 

Shelly, standing at the front, smiled at him like an old friend. “Hey, Coop, coffee and pie?”

“Two coffees. And Pie.”  
“Right you are.”

Cooper settled onto the stool at the bar and the world just felt right to him. 

A minute later, Bobby settled in to the seat beside him, looking a bit morose as he hunched against the bar. “How much do you remember?”

“Of what, Bobby?”

“Of the world where Laura Palmer died.”

“All of it, I think. Is there a way to check?”

Bobby shook his head. “I think it’s just what you remember and what isn’t the same as you remember.”

“Is it a better world?”

“Some,” Bobby said with a shrug. 

Shelly came back, perfectly balancing a plate of pie and two coffees which she set in front of Cooper. Then she turned, her whole face lighting up before she swept in to kiss Bobby. “Hey, Bobby. I got your favorite coming.” She winked at him. “Well, your second favorite.” She rushed off again.

Bobby smiled, his hands smoothing the placemat before him. “Definitely some things are better.”

“And worse?”

Bobby looked down at the placemat looking on the verge of tears. “I have a son.” He took a deep shuddering breath. “Which is good from a point of view.” 

Shelly, nearly dropped her plate when she saw Bobby on her return. “Hey, Bobby, baby, what’s wrong. Come on, let’s you and me talk in the back.” She pulled him, guiding him by hand around the bar into the back.

Cooper frowned and nodded. He didn’t understand the specific change but he could guess. Change something as big as Laura Palmer and the world around it could change a lot. 

He stared down at his coffee as he sipped it.

One of the other waitresses came up and asked with a light happy teasing voice, “How’s that coffee, Coop?”

“Damn fine.” He raised his head. And he could feel the smile raise up out of his chest to glow at the silver haired waitress. “Damn fine cup of coffee. Annie.” 

Annie laughed at him. “Well don’t drink a third. Don’t forget we’re going fishing with Harry and Josie at the crack of dawn tomorrow. So, you need a little sleep.” 

He grinned. “I’ll remember.” He raised his cup of coffee with his left hand. Clinking it with the ring he didn’t remember ever wearing before. He licked his lips. “Hey, speaking of remembering, I’m having some trouble. Do you remember whatever happened to Laura Palmer?”

“Laura Palmer?” Annie looked at him surprised. “Maybe you do need another cup of coffee. She’s still working up at the Great Northern for Audrey Wheeler. Like she has been for the last twenty-odd years. You feeling ok, Coop?”

“Maybe not perfect. But now that you’re here. Definitely better.”

**Author's Note:**

> And that's the end.
> 
> Thanks for reading if you've gotten this far. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you were upset with the ending, I hope it gave you a little closure, too.


End file.
